Fresno Bee: Satisfied, Uncertain, Fearful: Valley Reactions To Price Appointment As U.S. Health Secretary
[Tom] Price, a retired orthopedic surgeon from Atlanta, has been a staunch opponent of funding for Planned Parenthood, has voiced support for replacing the Affordable Care Act and for controlling the costs of Medicare and Medicaid (known as Medi-Cal in California) Socorro Santillan, executive director of Barrios Unidos, a southeast Fresno organization that works to reduce teen pregnancies, said: “We’re truly scared that all the progress we’ve had in the last several years is going to be totally replaced.” Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, painted an equally grim picture: “His appointment confirms on party lines that we are more likely to get significant cuts to the Medi-Cal program that half of the Central Valley residents depend on. It would mean millions of people losing coverage; there’s no way around that.” (Anderson, 2/10)

The New York Times: Tom Price Is Sworn In As Health Secretary Amid Senate Disunity
President Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Tom Price, took office on Friday with a promise to fix what he called a “broken health care system” that was “harming Americans and their families.” Mr. Price was sworn in by Vice President Mike Pence just hours after the Senate, by a party-line vote of 52 to 47, confirmed his nomination in the early hours of Friday morning. (Pear and Rappeport, 2/10)

In other news —

Capital Public Radio/KXJZ: Party Affiliation Predicts Poll Opinions On Climate Change, Health Care, Pres. Trump 
Political party affiliation continues to strongly predict opinion in California on climate change, health care and President Donald Trump. The Public Policy Institute of California finds almost 75 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of the president, compared to only 10 percent of Democrats. Numbers are similar for climate change: 80 percent of Democrats view it as a major threat, but just 33 percent of Republicans. (Bradford, 2/10)

Stat: California's Criminal Penalties For HIV Transmission Could Be Rolled Back
The state legislature decided in 1988 that somebody who donated blood while knowingly HIV-positive could be punished with up to six years in prison. Ten years later, it became a felony to have unprotected sex with the intent of transmitting HIV to a partner. Now, in 2017, a group of Democratic state lawmakers say times have changed — not that those behaviors shouldn’t be illegal, but that HIV/AIDS shouldn’t be singled out. Under California’s newly introduced Senate Bill 239, intentionally transmitting any infectious or communicable disease, including HIV, would be a misdemeanor, not a felony. (Facher, 2/13)

The Associated Press: Anti-Abortion Activists, Counter-Protesters Rally Around US
Anti-abortion activists emboldened by the new administration of President Donald Trump staged rallies around the country Saturday calling for the federal government to cut off payments to Planned Parenthood, but in some cities counter-protests dwarfed the demonstrations. Thousands of Planned Parenthood supporters, many wearing the pointy-eared pink hats popularized by last month's women's marches, turned out for a rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, separated by barricades from an anti-abortion crowd of a couple hundred people. In Detroit, about 300 people turned up outside a Planned Parenthood office, most of them supporting the organization. In St. Louis, thousands marched, many carrying pink signs that read, "I stand with Planned Parenthood." (2/11)

The Mercury News: Thousands Rally To Support Planned Parenthood, Women's Rights
As part of a thunderous response to anti-abortion groups targeting Planned Parenthood locations nationwide, thousands of abortion rights demonstrators lined The Alameda on Saturday, rallying in support of the nonprofit that provides abortions and other medical services to women throughout the United States. Wearing many shades of pink and holding posters that read “Stand with Planned Parenthood” and “Keep your religion off my body,” the crowd of about 4,000 people focused on the decades-long debate over whether women should be allowed to decide whether to terminate their pregnancies. (Sanchez, 2/11)

KQED: Anti-Planned Parenthood Rally Overshadowed By Counter-Protest In SF 
Protesters opposed to – and in support of – abortion clashed outside the Planned Parenthood clinic in San Francisco on Saturday, arguing over whether taxpayer money should go to a women’s health organization that provides abortion. “We think that the other side has some valid concerns about women’s health,” said Terrisa Bukovinac, president of Pro-Life Future San Francisco. “However we are absolutely not OK with federal funds going to an organization that profits from human demise.” The rally was one of 200 organized across the country – about 30 of them in California – by anti-abortion activists, urging Congress to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood. In several locations, including Denver and St. Paul, Minn., demonstrators were outnumbered by counter-protesters. (Dembosky, 2/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: Nationwide Planned Parenthood Protests Energize Patients, Opponents 
[Damien] Cox is among those voicing support for the nonprofit reproductive health organization at what could be a critical moment in its history. President Trump and his administration have threatened to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, because the services provided by the clinics include abortions. On Saturday, the debate will crest with nationwide rallies — including at clinics in San Francisco, Redwood City and Napa — calling for the “defunding” of Planned Parenthood. (Ravani, 2/10)

Sacramento Bee: Abortion Rates Drop In California, Amid Federal Debate On Planned Parenthood, Reproductive Rights 
Abortion rates are at an all-time low in California, and both sides of the political aisle are taking credit. New abortion data from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization that studies reproductive health, shows that fewer women than ever are obtaining abortions nationwide. Abortion opponents call it proof that their efforts to sway women away from the procedure are working, while abortion rights advocates point to increased sexual education and contraceptive use as drivers of the decline. (Caiola and Reese, 2/13)

KQED News: Regulators May Reopen Aliso Canyon Gas Field Over Residents’ Objections
About a year after plugging the largest methane leak in U.S. history, Southern California Gas Co. may once again start pumping natural gas into its Aliso Canyon storage field in Los Angeles County. State regulators are weighing whether to reopen the gas field over the objections of residents and politicians. “I think the wells are safe,” says Ken Harris, California’s Oil and Gas supervisor, one of two regulators making the decision. He says SoCalGas has replaced miles of pipeline at the field. Inspectors have cleared 37 out of 114 gas wells for operation so far and are still checking out the rest. And Harris says new rules would require more and better inspections. (Peterson, 2/10)

In other news from across the state —

KPBS: Imperial Valley Food Bank Launches Capital Campaign 
The Imperial Valley Food Bank has launched a campaign to build a new warehouse and distribution center. And its timing appears to be right on the mark.Hunger is a major problem in Imperial County, one of the poorest parts of California. The county has a high poverty rate, and many people grapple with chronic unemployment. (Goldberg, 2/10)

The New York Times: Republicans, Aiming To Kill Health Law, Also Work To Shore It Up
After denouncing the Affordable Care Act as an abomination for seven years, Republicans in Congress, working with the Trump administration, are urgently seeking ways to shore up health insurance marketplaces created by the law. While President Trump said as a candidate that “Obamacare is certain to collapse of its own weight,” Republicans fear such an outcome because, now that the fate of the health law is in their hands, they could be blamed by consumers and Democrats. (Pear, 2/10)

In other national health care news —

The Wall Street Journal: Employers Balk At Curbs On Generous Health Plans
The Affordable Care Act’s tax on high-cost employer health plans faced sharp opposition from employers and unions. Now, Republicans are drawing equal fire for ACA replacement proposals that those groups say would have some of the same effects. The ACA’s so-called Cadillac tax is levied on the value of employer health plans above a certain threshold, in part to discourage what backers argue are overly generous plans and high usage of costly care. It is one of the few aspects of the law that Congress has tweaked, delaying its impact until 2020. (Wilde Mathews, 2/13)

The Associated Press: GOP Must Decide What To Do With Health Law Taxes
Republicans love cutting taxes, especially if they were authored by a president named Barack Obama. But as they push their wobbly effort to erase his health care overhaul, they're divided over whether to repeal the levies the law imposed to finance its expanded coverage for millions of Americans. (2/13)

Newsday: Sen. Schumer: Medicare In Grave Danger With New HHS Secretary
Sen. Chuck Schumer said that Medicare as we know it is in grave danger, just two days after Tom Price’s confirmation as Health and Human Services Secretary. At a Sunday news conference, Schumer pledged to use his new role as Senate Democratic Leader to block “efforts to weaken, wound and destroy Medicare.” ... Price’s Friday confirmation testimony suggests that under his administration, Medicare might be converted to a fixed amount voucher-based program, instead of the more flexible “modest, earned benefits for dignity and health security” that these seniors currently collect, Schumer said. (Chung, 2/12)

NPR: Foreign-Born Doctors Provide Care In Underserved Area
[Dr. Muhammad] Tauseef was born and raised in Pakistan. After going to medical school there, he applied to come to the U.S. to train as a pediatrician. It's a path thousands of foreign-born medical students follow every year — a path that's been around for more than half a century. And, like most foreign-born physicians, Tauseef came on a J1 visa. That meant after training he had two options: return to Pakistan or work for three years in an area the U.S. government has identified as having a provider shortage. (Silverman, 2/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Drug Industry Goes Boldly Into New Minefield
Last month, the pharmaceutical industry, under pressure from the president among others for persistent price hikes, launched an ad campaign to highlight its drug research. Called “Go Boldly,” an allusion to poet Dylan Thomas, the campaign was intended to bolster the industry’s reputation after pricing scandals involving companies such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals International and Turing Pharmaceuticals. It took just a few weeks for another pharma company to ignite a controversy and set off the requisite tales of patients unable to afford the treatment. (Grant, 2/10)

Stat: 'We Never Talked About It': As Opioid Deaths Rise, Families Of Color Stay Silent
There’s a new honesty these days about drug abuse. In obituaries, media interviews, and letters to lawmakers, families that have lost loved ones to overdoses are naming the drugs that killed them. As more and more people emerge from the shadows to put a face on the nation’s opioid epidemic, however, faces of color are notably absent. In part that reflects the makeup of the epidemic itself: While deaths among white Americans have soared, those among blacks and Latinos have stayed relatively steady. (Samuel, 2/13)